Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal yesterday said Maulana Saad Kandhalvi, Delhi-based Supreme Council member of Tabligh-Jamaat in India, will not attend the three-day Biswa Ijtema that begins on the banks of Turag today. “Saad Kandhalvi will stay at the Kakrail mosque during the Ijtema and he will return to his homeland at his convenient time,” he told reporters after emerging from a meeting held at the home ministry yesterday. The home minister said that he just mediated between the two factions of the Tabligh Jamaat and the leaders of the two factions resolved the issue surrounding Maulana Saad, an Indian Tabligh-Jamaat scholar.

Earlier in the day, Joint Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Krishna Pada Roy, on behalf of the DMP commissioner, also said that Maulana Saad will not attend the first phase of the Biswa Ijtema. A faction of the Tabligh Jamaat on Wednesday blocked the busy road in front of  Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the capital protesting the arrival of Maulana Saad from India to attend the 53rd Biswa Ijtema.

A number of followers of a faction of Tabligh Jamaat sat on the road and chanted slogans against Saad for his controversial comments on the Holy Quran and Sunnah. The protest led to grid lock in the northern part of the capital and people were left to suffer for want of transportation.

After arriving at the airport, the law enforcement agencies had to escort him to Kakrail Mosque with police cordons and he has since been staying there.

The members of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been deployed in and around the Kakrail moque to avoid any untoward incident. Still, there were protests in front of the mosque yesterday protesting Saad’s arrival and his stay there. Meanhwile, Hefazat-e Islam yesterday threatened that ‘peace and mobility’ would be affected in the capital if Saad is not sent to India by the day. Hefazat’s Dhaka metropolitan unit leader Fazlul Karim Kashemi declared the ultimatum while talking to the journalists after a meeting with the members of a faction of the organisation in front of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque yesterday afternoon.

Kashemi claimed a vested quarter was trying to ruin the peace in the country by bringing Maulana Saad in the country.